Preparations are underway.

Preparations for our placement in Wa, Ghana are now well underway. We have recently returned from an excellent VSO training course in Birmingham. The facilitators were brilliant and we have learned loads of new facilitation tips. There were 32 of us on this course, although there will be over 1000 volunteers in total heading out in September. Within this group of 32, the ages ranged from 25 to 65, with a significant number of people in their 50s. They will be heading to VSO placements all over the world, including Ethiopia, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Malawi and Nepal. We even met up with 3 other volunteers who will be going to Ghana. The majority are going to placements in education, although there were also lawyers, architects, health care specialists, and a woman who will be working with the sex workers in the streets of Dakar, Bangladesh. The whole course gave us a stronger feeling of being part of a much larger community of people who are totally committed to VSO’s philosophy of working to alleviate poverty through “sharing skills and building capacity”.

We are gradually learning more about our placements in Ghana. We now have regular contact with current and returned volunteers from Wa, and we are finding out more about the basics of living and working in a sub-Saharan climate. They all indicate that riding a bicycle is the best way to get around and to get exercise, so this knowledge is currently acting as our security blanket! We have now completed all the jabs for virtually every known disease, and we’ll start the anti-malarial tablets soon.

Wa is the capital of the Upper West region. (There are 10 regions.) Ghana is focusing on educational development in the Upper West and Upper East regions, as these are the poorest in Ghana on all indicators. Literacy levels are really low; life expectancy is very low; teachers are very poorly paid, and teachers and headteachers have had virtually no training. We will be working with school/college headteachers and with education service staff on leadership and management. As an essential part of our role, we will be raising awareness and incorporating work on HIV/AIDs and issues related to gender and disability.

VSO volunteers have been working in Wa for a number of years, so we will hopefully be building on the progress that has already been made. We have been warned that patience is an essential quality, as the pace of change is incredibly slow. We’ll definitely need to work on this one! We will continue to liaise with volunteers who are currently in Wa and some who have returned. They are all extremely helpful and supportive. All our queries have been answered promptly and advice has been freely given. Thanks to them all. Our confidence and excitement are building – along with a few nervous wobbles.